HEART & MIND

For much of my life I gladly scoffed at people like the one I have become today. Nowadays I remain unfazed by the barbs directed at me from people like the one I used to be. I was a skeptic, disconnected from two parts of my being I have come to value more than any other today: heart and mind. I thought of the heart merely as a pump that kept the body alive by sending blood to its various parts. Did I feel love? I suppose to, in my way. I loved my family, didn't I? Loved the people close to me in my life? I did, but it was only ridiculously late in life that I realized I had defined love mostly as an obligation; something I was supposed to do. The love I truly felt--and I'm sure I did--was hidden from my by the other emotions I failed to identify or understand: fear, anger...

As for the mind, I had it all confused with the brain--that little piece of meat enclosed in its box up top. I thought a lot. I thought my thoughts were my mind. What a small-minded notion, I know now, after years of visiting it almost daily in my meditation practice. The mind, along with the heart, are capable of far more than I ever thought possible; indeed what any of my fellow skeptics believe possible. Some were provoked the other day the public post on my social media page, where I proposed the radical act of sending good thoughts to the bellicose president of Russia and wishing him, of all things, happiness. I was taken to task for, one, the ridiculous notion that I could actually send thoughts--"mental telepathy", perhaps? Two, that this dreadful man deserved happiness, or that he was perfectly happy with his evil ways. Three, that it would make an difference anyway. 

All true, I suppose, unless you happen to espouse my definition of happiness and share my belief that the powers of heart and mind are endless, and mostly unknown and as yet untapped by us human beings even in the 21st century. Oh yeah, I used to think when I heard the Beatles singing on and on about how love is all there is; or when I came across the happy teachings of Ram Dass and other gurus. Is it strange that I now believe this stuff myself? That I find love everywhere I care to look with an open heart, and recognize its healing, all-unifying properties? If this is a kind of wisdom, I came late to it, and am still discovering it as I live and breathe--the latter an important part, I have discovered, in this whole process. 

My daily forays into the unbounded space of mind are humbling reminders of how great it is, how unknowable, and how small my little self. If I find happiness there it's not the "mindless" happiness of blissing out, as some suppose; it's rather the freedom I can create from all the suffering I otherwise experience in my life and the world around m: freedom from want, from need, from ambition, from dependency, from animosity toward others and oppression from them. The work of meditation--and I see it as work--is to find those sources of suffering and release myself from them insofar as possible.

One last word. I think my skeptical friends underestimate the power of intention rooted in the mind.I know that I will not make world peace, nor change Putin's mind, simply by sending out those thoughts. But intention is a powerful thing and, joined with the intentions of millions of my fellow human beings similarly intent on peace it is a force to be reckoned with and, despite everything, will eventually win out.

 

HAPPINESS

Okay, I know this will sound foolish, fanciful, a bit naive, but I don't have to hide it. I had a heart-to-heart with Russian President Vladimir Putin this morning. In meditation. I have learned first to breathe rancor, malice, animosity from my own heart in order to be able to send out thoughts of goodwill to others and wish them happiness. Especially those I distrust or dislike.

It may sound odd to be wishing the likes of Putin happiness. But what I have learned to think of as "true happiness" comes from within. It does not, cannot come at the cost of any other person's happiness. Indeed, on the contrary, this kind of happiness is contagious. It will cause no harm. No person can be truly happy, in this sense, when he tells lies. No person can be truly happy when he contemplates unprovoked aggression that will likely cost the lives of tens of thousands of his fellow beings.

So I wish him happiness. The kind of happiness I'm talking about. True happiness. I send thoughts of goodwill across continent and ocean. Call me naive but, if nothing else, it feels better not to succumb to the creeping poison of rage and animosity that I otherwise feel. Better to be rid of it and share the happiness.

Try it. If we all do it, who knows, it might help.

MEN

              It will be thirty years this June since I first enrolled in the men’s training weekend that has shaped my life in so many ways since then. I signed up despite the deeply buried, barely acknowledged fears and the intellectual objections that normally would have prevented me from attending an event that advertised itself as a “New Warrior Training Adventure.” “Warriors!” “Adventure!” Please! This was not something that appealed to my British genes and formal education, nor to my rather stiff academic self. But I remain immensely grateful that some mysterious instinctive wisdom prevailed and prodded me, against all probability, into signing up.

           I don’t know what I was expecting when I arrived (some two hours late! Expecting to be welcomed with sympathy for the terrible traffic that had held me up, I was put out, to say the least, to be “called onto the carpet” and held accountable for my tardiness). I was expecting some nice conference room discussion, I suppose, a polite seminar devoted to the challenges of being a conventional white male in a changing world—and one that insufficiently acknowledged my superior intellect and my ability to fix any problem that cropped up in my life, whether for myself or those around me. Which is not what I got. What I got myself into was a situation in which I was challenged in body, mind and spirit, challenged to question all the assumptions I had made thus far about my masculinity, which I’d defined, for the most part, by the imperious needs of one particular part of my anatomy. I was asked to connect with a part of my being that I had studiously ignored until that time: my heart. 

            Now, thirty years later, it is still my joy to join a monthly gathering of other men who, at some point in their lives, shared the experience of that weekend with me. We are all older now—not all as old as me, but men in their seventies and early eighties—for a Zoom session we call “conscious aging.” We are looking at the shared experience of growing old and learning how to do it with unabated though necessarily changing masculine energy. How to do it with gratitude and consciousness. These are all powerful men with whom I feel unquestioningly at ease, men whom I trust—indeed, have trusted—with my life. We have learned to listen to each other with full attention and compassion, and to speak with total authenticity. No topics are taboo, even the most intimate. In recent meetings we have been talking freely and in depth about ways in which our sexual lives must change with age, the ways in which we can find satisfaction for the familiar old urge when the equipment we are given to work with no longer functions in the same old pleasing way. There are ways and means of making love, we are each discovering in our own experience, that require skills other than those we used throughout our earlier lives. Touching, hugging, cuddling, tenderness, we are learning, can be “enough.”

            It’s a good feeling to know, quite simply, that I am not alone—in this or any of the other life changes we are experiencing in growing old.

            So these are the men who taught me—well, with whom I learned; there’s a difference—to make the kind of connection that engages my attention in this new project that I’m working on. Without them, I would not be writing, nor would I know how to write, the words I write today. Without them, I think, I might never have learned the deeper significance of what it means to love—to give as well as to receive it. 

            Such cause for gratitude, then. Such deep connection. Such love.

 

QUEEN MARY

 Dear Harry,

      Remember that Flora worked for a while for Cunard, crossing the Atlantic on several of their great Ocean liners--including the Queen Mary? I've been reading a book by a seaman who started out in the early sailing ship days and ended up as "Captain of the Queens"--the title of his book. The author shares your name, Harry, Harry Grattridge. It's an old book, published around the time of his retirement in 1956. I worked out the dates, and it's entirely possible that Flora worked under his command. She must have joined Cunard fairly soon after her secretarial training, so maybe around age 20--which would have been in 1954. Her title (rank?) was "purserette", and I guess she had mostly secretarial duties, possibly for passengers as well as the ship's Purser.

       Anyway, it was kind of fun to read about the ship, remembering that early part of her working life. She later worked as secretary to the brother of Donald Maclean, of "Cambridge Five" spy fame, in an advertising agency, where she once posed with Cary Grant for a PR picture. And then got married, of course, which is what was expected of a respectable girl back then. So I was thinking of Flora as I read the book. It proved to be quite a fascinating tale, though I confess I got a bit bored toward the end, with countless stories about the parade of rich and (once!) famous passengers he entertained. High privilege, crossing the ocean on the Queens in those days. I was distressed--well, a bit angry, really, to find literally no mention of the second- and third-class passengers. Just the Lords and Ladies, Sir this and the Honorable that. Not to mention the captains of industry. Ugh!

        And why did Flora not get a single mention, start to finish, eh? I'll bet she earned a pittance, too. But she did get to New York. Ah, well, there you go, Harry. Par for the course, they say.

With love, Peter

FERN DELL

             It’s lunch time. We decide to drive up to the Fern Dell area of Griffith Park for a bit of a hike and a bite to eat at the Trails Café. Parking, surprisingly, is a challenge—the street near the entrance an unbroken line of parked cars. And this is a Thursday!

            We find a place, though, and walk up the path that leads into the park past the café. It’s later than we thought, the café closes at 2, so we decide to eat first and walk later. Surprisingly, again, a rather long line to the order window—everyone spaced out to the regulation six feet apart. When our turn arrives, Ellie goes to the window to order; she has the mask. Forgetful as ever, I left mine in the car. I find a place to sit in the shade (it’s hot! High 80s in Los Angeles in February is a heat wave) and wait while she orders a sandwich to share, an “egg in a basket”, a strange kind of scrambled egg muffin, a glass—no, a clear plastic cup—of lemonade.

            The outdoor tables up behind the café are crowded with lunch guests. Finding one with only two people, we ask if they’ll kindly move down to one end so that we can share it. “Of course,” says the young woman, kindly. They move down, we unpack our paper bag and tuck in to what turns out to be a good lunch. The avocado sandwich is delicious. We hear fragments of conversation from our young neighbors and detect an English accent. The attractive young woman with flaxen blond hair is wearing a Loch Ness t-shirt with a cartoon image of Nessie.

            It’s Jake, as usual, who breaks the ice. He’s interested in sniffing out the fluffy pup that belongs to our neighbor. We smile at our dogs, at each other. “Did you see the monster?” I ask. The young woman tells us she’s from Scotland. Brought up in Devon. Is over here as an aspiring actress and film director. She reminds me a little of the British actress Keira Knightly, some of the same unapologetic, bright energy, the same eager interest in the world around her. I refrain from saying this, though; I have always thought it rude to tell someone they remind you of somebody else. As though they are not enough in themselves. Her lunch companion, a dark-haired, bearded young man, is a cinematographer. He studied at the nearby American Film Institute (AFI) where our daughter Sarah manages the catalogue—a 100-year history of American film. We mention the connection. Small world.

            Soon we are all four deep in conversation, probing for common ground, for what brings us all together on this sunny, hot day in Griffith Park. She is a writer, I am a writer. She’s from Scotland, delighted to hear that I’m from Newcastle. To place myself a bit—and because we are both British in origin—I mention my book on David Hockney. She is impressed, makes note of my name. Who knows how, we arrive at my time at Cambridge; our young woman friend applied for studies there and was sad to have been turned down. She is amazed to hear that our granddaughter got in. Their professional involvement in film-making provides more connection, Ellie telling them of her screenwriter father. As we talk, we find more and more little points of connection between us, young and, well, frankly, old. It’s amazing, really, how much we have to talk about, how much we find to share. A nice bond develops, even though we all know it to be an ephemeral one, one that will last no longer than our lunch at the same table in Griffith Park on a sunny, hot Thursday.

            The time comes for us all to move on. We have all stayed longer than we’d intended. Rather comically, we exchange names even as we say goodbye, never expecting to meet again. The young man is Adam. The young woman is… Georgia! I tell her Georgia is the name of our granddaughter, the one who did, in fact, get into Cambridge. Another strange coincidence, a strange common bond. A bond that, no sooner discovered, is fated to be broken.

            There’s a certain sadness in saying goodbye. It feels almost as though we could have been friends with these so much younger people, who now go their own way. Georgia and Adam. Peter and Ellie. A connection that no matter how brief had value, a moment of mutual recognition, of mutual appreciation… almost of love.

 

 

OLD FRIENDS

             Yesterday a visit with old friends... We arrive late afternoon with a bottle of champagne to spend a while with our former neighbors. We know the street well, having lived there for some thirty-five years. It lives up to its name, Ronda Vista, with its "round view", leading up the crest of the Franklin Hill at the far east end of Hollywood. From our old house we enjoyed a not-quite 360 degree view, from the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains to the east and the scrubby hills of Griffith Park to the north, then past the Griffith Park observatory (which I’d known for years as the site of the knife fight in “Rebel Without a Cause” before I ever saw it) and the famous tall white letters of the Hollywood sign that loom above the city of Hollywood itself, then out as far as the Santa Monica mountains and the Pacific Ocean to the west. On a clear day, out to the south and west, we could catch a glimpse of distant Catalina Island. This, for those many years, was our perch at what felt like the rim of the world.
            Our long-time neighbors still live in the next house down the hill. They moved in about the same time as ourselves and their son was born not long before our daughter. We had bought our house, against all common sense, before we were married and with Sarah already on the way. One Armistice Day, on 11/11, with Ellie already eight months pregnant, we got up to a bright Southern California morning and decided to get married. Who but our good neighbors would we invite to be our witnesses? We drove downtown and met at a city judge’s office, reciting the necessary words before heading off to the posh Biltmore Hotel in time for a champagne toast at eleven minutes past eleven.
            We have history, then. We peek into the house, where Linda is keen to show us the collection of Shel’s creations from his woodshop in the basement. We are astounded. We have known about this “hobby” for some time. Shel has often mentioned how he will disappear into his workshop with, long ago, one of his favorite pipes—now long abandoned in favor of an occasional cigar—to tinker with the wood he loves to work with. But this! It’s the work of years, an incredible array, literally hundreds of delightful, whimsical toys, figures and games put together out of scraps of painted wood crowding countless shelves and odd corners of the rooms. The product of one of those quirky and obsessive imaginations, the whole collection deserves, we thought, a full-scale exhibition at the Craft and Folk Art Museum. 
            Outside, on the back deck, Linda brings out an array of crackers and cheeses and Shel opens up our bottle of champagne. The sun begins to set out over the Pacific Ocean as we sit and reminisce about the many years we have known each other. Our old house looms next door, a comfortable and familiar presence. The “new” owner has kept the same exterior colors that we chose all those years ago. Soon, our friends tell us, it will be sold again—and likely at twice the price we sold it for. Having paid just a little more than $40,000 dollars for these grand old houses back in the early 1970s, we shake our heads in shared amazement at the memory. Ellie and I had been paying $230 in rent at a little house in a nearby street and we worried about coming up with an extra $20 for the $250 monthly mortgage payment. 
            All these years we have known each other, and have shared so much. No wonder we can sit in complete comfort now and share a glass of wine. I start to remark on that, but the others misunderstand me, thinking that I’m remarking on one of the privileges of age, to have nothing more about the fragile ego to protect. Which is true, of course, but what I was about to mention was that simple, profound feeling of connection, the pleasant feeling of sitting there at a table together with so much unspoken, so much unnecessary, even, to speak. A depth and wealth of shared experience that goes back fifty years.
            The sun sets, the evening shadows start to gather around us, and we feel at ease. It’s this, I realize, that I’m trying to name and celebrate. A quietly sacred moment of communion.
 

FLORA

           Today would have been my sister Flora’s 88^th birthday. She was born a year and half before me and died, too young, at 80. I always felt it was a decision on her part, to move on to what she called “the next great adventure.” I’m sure she wanted to avoid the inevitable pain as her cancer metastasized, along with all the indignities of illness and dependency. 

            It seems impossible that she left us, now eight years ago. I have continued to mourn her loss, and have regretted that it took us so many years—decades, really—before we “found” each other. We were separated already very young, sent off before the age of ten to different schools; and she left home immediately after school, first to secretarial college (the fate of girls, back then; I went to Cambridge!) and then to different jobs, mostly in London but including a stint with Cunard, crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary and other luxury liners. We did attend each other’s wedding, but she stayed in England while I went off to Germany, Canada, the US. We both had children, both went through the painful experience of divorce. Separated by an ocean and a continent, we saw each other only occasionally over many years.

            We began to find our common ground only in our sixties. She was way ahead of me on the path to a deeper consciousness, a deeper commitment to the life of the heart and mind. For longer than I care to admit, I scoffed at her on the journey she was taking. It was only when confronted with irrefutable turmoil and pain in my own life that I began to see the need for change and found myself at the start of that same journey. For what felt like the first time, we became brother and sister, regretting the geographical distance that lay between us but holding each other more dearly in our hearts.

            As Flora’s birthday approached, I wrote last week to her two daughters, both still in England, and was much moved to hear back from them in long, affectionate emails. Today, the two “girls”—no longer girls, of course, but mature women, each inheriting different qualities from their mother—are on a kind of retreat together in the Welsh countryside, in what I’m sure is a loving celebration of their “mum”. I send my own loving thoughts their way. We share the grief, but also the sense of respect and honor for a life that was fully and diligently examined, a life dedicated to the joy and the mystery of the inner life. Indeed, of life itself.

            I wish that Flora were still here for me to wish her the traditional "Happy Birthday... and many more!" Alas, she's not. But she lives on in the hearts of those of us who loved her.

A SIMPLE ACT OF SERVICE

  Dear Harry,

            About five years ago I had the idea to form a meditation group in our local community here in Los Angeles, on the Franklin Hill, at the far east end of the Hollywood Hills. I put out word on Nextdoor, our friendly online neighborhood network, and was surprised at the number of responses. People were interested. Inspired. I invited everyone to join us at our house on a Wednesday evening, early, before the dinner hour, and spend a quiet hour with me in meditation. 

            We began to make a weekly practice of it, gathering each Wednesday in our living room. Using as a model the method I have learned from many years of sitting with Thanissaro Bhikku, Abbot of the Thai Forest monastery who has served as guide to my Sunday morning sitting group in Laguna Beach, I introduce the session with a 20-minute guided meditation, then lead the group into a further 20 minutes of silent introspection, leaving a last 20 minutes or so for discussion, questions, even chit-chat, whatever feels right for the occasion. 

            Since the arrival of the coronavirus to disrupt personal contact of this kind, we have managed to maintain our weekly ritual thanks to the online technology of Zoom. It is not the same, of course, but we do achieve a measure of community, even through the medium of our computer screens. 

            For me, this has become a gratifying way to fulfill my lasting need to be of service. You, Harry, an Anglican minister, had your “flocks”—the congregations that attended services in your churches every Sunday morning. Your calling was a service that extended far beyond those services, however. Every day of the week you were out among your parishioners, visiting the sick—and bringing communion to them when they so desired—comforting the sorrowful and grieving, feeding the hungry and providing what aid you could to the poor and destitute. You instilled in me, as I was growing up, the model of service as the proper way to live my life. For many years, I failed to recognize it as such but now, as the end of my own life approaches, I am much aware that to lead a good life means to live as much for others as for myself.

            Seeking reassurance from within, I often ask myself if writing is an act of service, because I have done it all my life. From one point of view, it can seem like a selfish, self-serving way to live, and there have been many times when I castigate myself for having chosen a path that is so solitary, so introspective, so internal. And then there are those moments when I hear from someone who has read some words of mine—no matter whether they have appeared in a magazine, a book, a blog, or simply online, on social media—someone who wants to let me know that I have in some way touched them; even changed their life. At such moments I take great joy in allowing myself to feel that I have indeed been of service.

            Still, there is nothing quite like being of service to even a small group of present fellow human beings, a tiny “flock”, if you will. So Wednesday evenings act as a kind of spiritual and emotional anchor in my life, a marker that lets me know exactly where I am in the passing of each day of the week, whether in anticipation or in retrospect. I am immensely grateful to have found it, and immensely grateful to those friends who join me. 

            I sit alone each morning—I have done so for a quarter century already—and that practice has brought about many changes in my life. It is a silent, solitary pleasure, an act of connection with the universe and, more intimately, with myself. And... the difference between this and sitting with others is substantial. I can feel it, physically, in my flesh and bones as well as knowing it in my mind; I feel the togetherness, the common intention, the community of human souls. It is, of everything I do, the very best. 

            So, Harry, I have yet another reason to say thank you. I regret that Idid not know enough to say it often while you were alive, but it feels good to say it now.

Thank you, Harry, for this gift among many, your son, Peter

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Dear Harry,

        There are times when a day just seems--forgive the expression--fucked-up from the start. You know what I mean. The term seems… apt for today.

        Here's the story. (You can laugh if you feel like it!)

         I was awakened in the middle of the night—3:00, 3:30, somewhere around there—by the malfunctioning of the CPAP machine I use not only to help myself sleep, because I have long suffered from sleep apnea, but also Ellie, because my sleeping disorder causes a dreadful snore that would otherwise keep her awake. I have been using this machine for probably twenty years now. I have never liked the mask I need to wear at night, but it’s a small price to pay for a good night’s sleep—for both of us.

            So around 3:00 or 3:30 the machine started to generate a loud hissing sound, so loud that it woke me and kept me from going back to sleep. It was accompanied by an uncomfortable downdraft that felt, well, not right. A preliminary exploration helped me to determine that the seal of the “cushion” that protects my face from the hard plastic frame was broken, and air was leaking out where it was not supposed to.

            I spent a while—too long, given what I correctly anticipated would be the futility of the attempt—trying to compensate for the flaw with a strategic placement of my head. No luck. The noise persisted, the air continued to leak. So I finally gave in. Removed the mask and tried to get back to sleep.

            Alas, I was continually awakened even as I started to drop off, by the sound of my own snores. I hated the thought of that near-certainty, that they would awaken Ellie too. So I crept out of bed and took myself to the small bed in the spare room, the one where little Luka sleeps when he overnights with us. I piled blankets over me, because it was cold in there. And tossed and turned…

            I must have finally fallen asleep, because I woke at 7:00—and was relieved to find Ellie still sleeping comfortably in our bed.

             That was the start.

            Next thing, once the morning tea was made, I got online to the CPAP shop to order a new mask. There seem to be hundreds of different makes and models sort through, and I was glad to finally find what I was looking for: the clone to the one that had broken during the night. It was advertised at $89.99. It seemed like a good deal, given the cost of these things, so I ordered an extra one for future use. I added both to my cart, and ordered a spare cushion, a new strap as a replacement in case it should be needed, a new 6’ air hose since mine is getting old. And clicked the order button.

            Well, the whole order should have come to a couple of hundred dollars. I moved ahead to check-out and was dismayed to discovered that there was now only one mask in my cart—everything else had disappeared—and that instead of the advertised $89.99 I was to pay $247 and some odd cents for just the one mask.

            I tried clicking on the invitation for a “chat” with an agent and waited an inordinate amount of time before giving up on that option. I tried calling the number given on the website. Busy signal. Over and over. I found a new number and tried calling that, only to reach one of those endless menus that finally direct you back to where you started. 

            So it went. I did finally, after two hours of frustration, manage to place an order with a sane charge attached. But as you can imagine I was by this time in no mood to get back to the morning’s writing I had planned. I started, instead, on my half hour’s exercise routine with weights and expandable bands and, hardly had I started, when Jake the dog rushed by, very pleased with himself and in evident excitement, leaving a trail of toilet paper all the way from the bathroom to the foot of the stairs. He dropped the end he had grabbed only when I yelled at him.

            Okay. Managed my half hour’s workout. Came upstairs. Found Jake, now on the dining room table with his nose buried in a bag of walnuts that had been left there from breakfast. Fortunately, he had not read the bag of brown sugar, but he surely would have liked to. More yelling. I called our good neighbor where Jake’s friends live—two dogs of the same breed and about the same ago—to ask if Jake could come over to play. And walked him over there.

            Phew! I’m taking advantage of a moment of peace to write these words. Who knows what could happen next. It is, as they say, one of those days. Or, as I say, fucked up from the start.

            Excuse the expression! You know what I mean.

With love, Peter